


share with me the sun

by theputterer



Series: assorted nonsense timestamps [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood, Depression, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fest, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mantooine, Mental Health Issues, Multi-Generational Nonsense, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 07:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11687256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: Ersa's melancholic father speaks a language she can't understand.She doesn't know what it means to be his daughter.She just wants to stand in the sun.As it turns out, she might be able to find him there.[Or: What do you do with all your loss?]





	share with me the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Portugal. The Man song.
> 
> Features background/characters from AMOR FATI and the rest of the Nonsense. This story does stand on its own, but for more explanation/historical background, refer to those stories.
> 
> Also, apologies in advance for the longest Author's Note in the world there at the end.

_**22 ABY** _

“You look just like your father.”

It seems like everyone on Fest says this to her, has said this to her at some point, and Ersa is just a child, six years old, and she never knows how to respond to this, so she simply nods her head, shrugs her arms, and hopes for the best.

It’s enough.

She knows it’s true, knows she looks like her father, because she can see the resemblance, and it’s something everyone comments on.

But the Prime Minister of Fest asks her a question, and it throws her.

“Are you your father’s daughter?” The Prime Minister asks, and Ersa has far less of a clue as to what to do with this, but it’s an actual question, and she’s expected to answer, probably, and so she throws caution to the wind, and nods.

Her mother smiles, and doesn’t disagree.

“Travia means it as a compliment,” her mother says, when Ersa brings this up later, when they’re headed home from the market, after they’ve run into the Prime Minister of Fest, who insists that Ersa call her Travia, even though she should really be called  _Minister Chan_ , or  _Prime Minister Chan_ , or at the very least,  _Minister Travia_. Ersa is six years old, but she knows that much, knows she should treat authority figures like the  _leader of the entire planet_ with the utmost respect, and she’s quite sure that calling the Prime Minister by her first name is not the way to do this.

But the Prime Minister always insists on it, so Ersa stumbles through the familiarity, and calls her Travia.

She doesn’t even call her schoolteachers by their first names.

Her mother also calls the Prime Minister by her first name, though, so at least it isn’t  _too_ unbearable.

And anyway, the thing at the heart of the issue is really the Prime Minister’s question: Ersa doesn’t know what it means to be her father’s daughter.

Not his lookalike; but  _his daughter_.

This is made particularly difficult by the simple, and unavoidable, fact that she was named after her mother, and not her father. She has her father’s surname, but her first name,  _Ersa_ , is a bastardization of her mother’s surname.

“Festian girl names end in  _a_ or  _e_ or  _i_ ,” her brother, Fima, says, when the origin of Ersa’s name is brought up one day. Fima is twelve years old, is twice Ersa’s age, and never lets her forget it. “Festian boy names end in  _o_ or a consonant. It makes sense that they ended your name differently than Mama’s, since her surname ends in an  _o_.” He frowns, and adds, “I’m the boy with the girl name.”

“I’m the girl with the boy name, then,” their mother says, and going by Fima’s logic, she isn’t wrong, her first name ends in a consonant.

“Your name isn’t Festian, Mama,” Fima says, and this is true.

“Your name isn’t either,” their mother replies, and Fima scowls, but she’s also right. “Fima is a boy’s name in Sernpidalian.”

“But we aren’t Sernpidalian, Mama,” he says.

“You, and your father, and Ersa, are, a little bit. Your grandmother was from Sernpidal.”

Ersa knows that Fima was named after their Sernpidalian grandmother, their father’s mother, who died a long time ago, when their father was only a child. She knows that her father loved her very much, and she knows exactly what she looked like, when she was Fima’s age, because her father has a paper picture of her at that age, resting on the mantle above the fireplace in the front room of their house in Fulcra.

Serafima Cassiano was beautiful, even at thirteen years old.

Ersa thinks her father looks very like her.

“Fima means  _fiery_ in Sernpidalian,” their mother says. “It’s a perfectly fine boy’s name.”

“ _Fiery_ ,” Fima mumbles. “That’s how I know it isn’t a Festian name.”

Fest is not fiery.

It is not hot, or even warm. It’s frozen, and frigid. It’s tundra, and ice, and frost. It’s mountains, and cliffs. It’s abysses, so deep and dark that to fall down one means to never, ever, be seen again, or at least this is what Fima tells Ersa whenever he takes her out with him to ice board on the outskirts of the capital city. This instills a fear in Ersa of dark places, of abysses and caves and even the night sky, though Fest is frequently cloud-covered, and being able to see the night sky is not common, especially in Fulcra, the biggest city on the planet.

Ersa isn’t sure if she’s afraid of the dark, or if she’s simply afraid of being alone, of being away from her family.

Her brother, with the Sernpidalian boy’s name that ends in  _a_.

Her mother, who is not Festian, with her pale skin, and tendency to shiver in temperatures that native Festians deem  _humid._

Her father, who people, not just the Prime Minister but all sorts of others, tell Ersa she looks just like.

Ersa knows this is true.

She looks more like her father than Fima does. Fima and their father do have the same big, dark brown eyes that dominate their face, the same narrow nose, the same slender stature. But Fima has their mother’s hair; thick, and a lighter brown than their father’s, and Fima keeps his longer, hanging around his shoulders, like their mother does.

And Fima has her chin, and her smile.

He looks most like their mother when he smiles, to the point that they sometimes look near-identical when they laugh.

Fima is his mother’s son.

He has her spirit, her daring, her energy. He rolls his eyes like her, and he makes their father laugh like she does.

Ersa has her mother’s mouth, and her straight nose.

Otherwise, she looks just like her father. She knows this.

Ersa’s hair is dark like her father’s, and she likes it long, to her waist, and there’s a curl to it that is reminiscent of Serafima's hair, going by the photograph. And Ersa’s skin is brown, much more like her father than her mother, and she’s tall for her age, so maybe she’ll be taller, like him, too. She has his thin face, and his cheekbones, and his dark eyes.

Ersa isn’t sure how much she likes her brown eyes. She wishes she could’ve inherited her mother’s green eyes, green like the grass she sees on Lah’mu when her parents take her and Fima there on the occasional trip, to see the homestead where their mother grew up, where their other grandparents lived, for a time.

Fima likes Lah'mu, for the most part. He’s interested in the colors, the bright green of the grass and light blue of the sea, but he isn’t sure what to make of the rain, the clear rain that falls on the planet every week, rain that is all water and not gray and frost and frozen like the snow that falls near-daily on Fest.

Ersa loves the rain.

She’s always out the door the second she realizes it’s raining on Lah’mu, sprinting through fields of tall green seagrass, running to the sea. Her mother taught her how to swim when she was four years old, and so Ersa dives into the water fearlessly, certain that at least one of her parents is trailing behind her, has followed her to the sea.

When she surfaces, she glances at the shore, and spots her father, hovering on the black sand beach.

He won’t join her in the water; he doesn’t like being in the ocean, doesn’t like swimming when the water is rough and rain-splattered, like it is now.

Ersa crawls out of a wave after about ten minutes of frolicking, and crosses the black sand, to sit next to her father, looking out over the sea.

The rain has stopped, but the sand is still wet, and it sticks to Ersa’s body, and she gratefully accepts the blanket her father wraps around her.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

“The rain,” Ersa says. “And the sea, and the grass, and the green. I like it here.”

“I do, too.”

“Why don’t we live here, Papa?”

She knows her mother loves Lah’mu, has likely always loved it, ever since she was a little girl, living here with her parents. And Fima is okay with Lah’mu, more or less. And now here’s her father, saying he likes Lah’mu, too.

“It’s not Fest,” her father says, and doesn’t add anything else, like he thinks Ersa will understand exactly what he means.

She isn’t sure.

She looks over the sea, at the bright sun overhead, all white light, ever so slowly lowering for a splendid sunset.

“It’s bright here,” she says. “I like the light.”

She glances at her father, and he’s smiling, and it’s a small, soft smile, and she thinks of how her father’s smiles are always so genuine because they have a habit of being rarer than everyone else’s, how he’s typically quiet and unassuming around her, how he prefers to silently listen to her, rather than offer his own thoughts and opinions, how sometimes getting him to talk to her for long stretches at a time feels like waiting for the bell at the end of the day to ring and let her out of school.

He speaks more easily with her mother and Fima, and Ersa doesn’t know what it is about  _her_ that flummoxes her father so much.

She’s a little scared to ask.

“Ersa,” her father says, slowly. “How do you feel about missing a couple days of school this week, and going with me to Mantooine?”

Ersa’s answering grin is so wide she’s sure she can’t possibly look like her melancholic father at all anymore.

 

* * *

  

Ersa’s father is the Ambassador to Mantooine for Fest. She doesn’t understand the specifics of his work, what it means exactly, but she knows that he goes to Mantooine a couple of times a month, for a few days at a time, and that he speaks near-fluent Mantooian, that he’s well known to the Mantooian government, that he’s very good at his job.

He likes Mantooine, and the people who live there, and this makes him very unusual to Festians, and Ersa has heard Fima defending their father on more than one occasion, trying to explain that Fest needs  _someone_ to work and communicate with the Mantooians, and that his father just happens to be that person for the Chan Administration.

Most Festians despise Mantooians. Ersa doesn’t know why, but this isn’t strange; no one really knows  _exactly_ why Mantooians and Festians despise each other, why they have a long history of petty squabbling and bickering. They just do, and it’s a history that continues to the present day, taken up with enthusiasm by the modern day inhabitants of each planet.

Fima might defend their father to his classmates, but Ersa knows he’s secretly ashamed.

He doesn’t get why their father loves Mantooine so much, what he sees in the planet, what he thinks Fest can take from it, and give back to it.

Ersa doesn’t understand why, either, but she’s six years old, and willing to give her father the benefit of the doubt.

Her mother helps her pack her lightest clothes, and then Ersa follows her father to the transport that will take them to Mantooine.

Mantooians wear white, and so Ersa puts on the white dress she wears every time she goes with her parents to Mantooine, and sits in the seat across from her father, who’s dressed in a white shirt and dark pants, as the transport breaks into the atmosphere of Mantooine.

“We aren’t Mantooian,” she says to him. “Why do  _we_ wear white?”

“It’s a sign of respect,” her father replies, smoothly, and she suspects he’s answered this question many times before. “It tells the Mantooians that we see them, and their culture, and we appreciate it. We’re here on their terms, and we want to be kind. It’s a good thing to do.”

This makes sense, and so Ersa nods, and accepts the thin blue scarf her father hands her, to wrap around her head and face, to protect her from the sun and sand, as the transport sinks into the heavy orange sand of Mantooine.

Mantooine is a planet where Fima’s name meaning of  _fiery_ would not be strange.

Mantooine is fiery.

It is nothing like Fest.

It’s hot, and blistering. It’s deserts, and sand, and never-ending sunlight. It’s clear blue skies, and white light. It’s yellow, and orange, and red, and blue. It’s bright, and the people of Mantooians wear white because white clothes detract from the sunlight, and help keep them cool on a planet that is anything but. Most of the natives of Mantooine have black skin, and the women frequently wrap their hair in colorful scarves of varying light shades of color, because it’s tradition, like how Festians wear so much gray.

Ersa takes her father’s hand, and lets him guide her through the streets of Mazl.

The capital city is smaller than Fulcra, but it’s still the biggest city on Mantooine. Unlike Fulcra, which consists mostly of dark buildings and underground tunnels, the buildings of Mantooine are white or light brown, and clear tunnels above ground are used by the citizens to traverse the city, protecting them from the frequent sandstorms that blow across the planet.

Ersa knows all this, because her father has told her all of it.

Mantooine is not something she’s learned about in school, but she’s six years old, she reasons, so maybe it’ll come up more when she’s older.

Her father asks her if she’s hungry, and Ersa has never turned down an offer of food in her life, and so she enthusiastically says yes.

She follows him into a small cafe.

The cafe isn’t very crowded, though there are a handful of black-skinned Mantooians sitting at tables, some going over holonet news stories, others playing some kind of board game Ersa doesn’t recognize. A few are smoking, but the smoke coming out of their pipes is colorful, wisps of blue and purple, and doesn’t smell like the cigarette smoke Ersa sneezes at in the streets of Fulcra. This smoke smells like a fire, sharp and acrid, but distinct, and almost bizarrely comforting.

Ersa’s attention is drawn to the far wall, which is covered in a beautiful mosaic rendering of a sunset. She stares, taking in the bright colors, the oranges and reds of the sun, the dark blue ocean it sets behind, stretching on the wall, ending at the floor of the cafe, which is a soft brown, like sand on a beach. It reminds her a little of Lah’mu, but the sea on Lah’mu is not as dark as the one on the wall of this cafe on Mantooine.

There are no oceans on Mantooine, and she’s puzzled by this mosaic of an ocean in this unknown cafe in Mazl.

She sits across from her father at a small table, and promptly shuffles up to sit on her legs, boosting her closer to his level.

A man comes out to serve them, and she sees his eyebrows arch at the sight of them, and Ersa knows enough about what Mantooians think of Festians to know that the man has correctly ascertained them as Festian, and that he doesn’t know what to make of them in his little cafe.

Her father speaks, then, and he speaks quickly and warmly in Mantooian, and the waiter visibly relaxes, an incredulous grin spreading over his face as he responds in kind.

Ersa listens to them talk, and the man leaves.

“What did you say?” She asks her father.

“I ordered us  _matokii_ , that dish you’ve had before, and liked.”

Ersa nods, because  _matokii_ is the one dish she has every time she’s on Mantooine. She likes it that much, likes the vegetables and the lightness of the food, so different from how hearty the food is on frigid Fest.

“The man was surprised you speak Mantooian,” Ersa comments, and her father nods.

“They usually are.”

Ersa looks at him. “How do you say  _hello_ in Mantooian?”

Her father looks back at her, and he looks a little confused, a little uncertain, and Ersa wonders if Fima has not once, in his twelve years, asked their father about Mantooian.

She isn’t sure why she’s asking now; only that she is.

Her father speaks the greeting, slowly, and Ersa tries repeating it. He listens, and corrects her, and she tries it again.

He says hello to her, in this foreign language he loves and speaks so well, and she says hello to him, in this language that is so strange and unknown to her, speaking to the father she often also thinks strange and unknown.

“Good,” he says, and he smiles, and that is not lost in translation.

 

* * *

 

After their meal, her father takes her with him to the Trade District of Mazl.

“I’m meeting with a woman called Imani Ya’qul,” he tells Ersa as they make their way through the streets, holding Ersa’s hand tightly in his.

“Who is she?”

“She’s the Trade Commissioner of Mantooine,” her father replies. “I met her about three years ago, when I was here for work. But I also consider her to be a friend.”

“Did you tell her about me?”

Her father laughs, a light, airy sound. “I did, yes. She’s wanted to meet you for a while now. And this is the first time you’re here, and the first time I’m only on Mantooine to meet with Imani, and not a full council.”

“Okay,” Ersa says, deciding she can meet this friend of her father’s.

The Trade District of Mazl is huge, and protected by a clear dome that distills the sunlight, so as to not hit the Mantooians directly. Ersa stares up at it, trusting her father to guide her through the crowds, people chattering in Mantooian and Basic all around them. She spots a few of the dirty, and confused, looks they send her and her father’s way, and she overhears a few snippets of conversation about her and her father involving some Basic swear words she’s caught Fima uttering and been sworn to secrecy over, but she makes eye contact with everyone who swears about her, and they quickly look away.

Her father leads her into a tall white building, the floor tiled in a mosaic of greens so it looks like an open field. She stands patiently at his side as he speaks to several Mantooians, and she only understands his name, and Imani Ya’qul’s name. She focuses her attention on the pretty tiled floor, and the pristine white walls, grateful to be back indoors, away from the oppressive heat of the sun outside.

She follows her father into a chilled, small office, largely undecorated save for a map of Mantooine on the wall, the wide window behind the large white desk dominating the room, revealing the yellow desert, seemingly endless.

There’s a woman sitting behind the desk, in front of the window, and she gets to her feet when they walk in, and moves immediately to pull Ersa’s father into a hug.

The woman is  _tall_ , as tall as Ersa’s father, and Ersa stares. The woman has black skin, smooth and barely lined, though there is a thick scar that stretches over the right side of her face, brushing up against her lip. Her eyes are an amazingly light blue, matching the scarf she has wrapped tightly around her face, covering any hair she might have on her head. She’s dressed in a long white and blue patterned dress, and her arms are bare, and surprisingly well-muscled, for her age.

She’s older than Ersa’s father, though Ersa thinks she’s younger than Travia, who is the oldest person Ersa knows.

“Cassian,” the woman says, her Mantooian accent pronouncing his name differently than how Festians say it. “It is so good to see you.”

She speaks in Basic, which surprises Ersa, because most Mantooians she’s seen her father interact with speak in Mantooian.

Ersa’s father pulls back, and he smiles at the woman, nodding his head. “Hello, Imani. It’s nice to see you. Thanks for having this meeting.”

“Anything for my favorite Festian,” the woman replies, and gestures for them to sit in the sturdy white chairs in front of her desk, as she settles back in her chair in front of the window. The woman carefully pats her headscarf, keeping it in place, and then looks at Ersa with her electric blue eyes.

“Oh, look at you,” the woman, Imani, says. “Look at  _you_. Cassian, she is beautiful.”

“She takes after her mother,” Ersa’s father says, and Ersa frowns because that is not a thing people say about her, while Imani laughs.

“Hush,” Imani says. She holds out her hand, and there are a few wrinkles on her hands, and Ersa knows this means she works with her hands, because her parents have wrinkles on their hands like this, though this woman has more, likely because she’s older than them.

Ersa takes the woman’s hand.

“I am Imani Ya’qul,” Imani announces.

“Ersa Andor,” Ersa says, like she has been told to do, when meeting new people.

“It is an honor to meet you, Ersa,” Imani says. “How old are you?”

“I’m six. How old are you?”

“Ersa--”

“It is fine, Cassian,” Imani says, to Ersa’s father’s interruption. “I asked her an inquisitive question, and she responded in kind. I expect nothing less from your daughter.” She turns back to Ersa, and says, “I am seventy-four years old, Ersa.”

Ersa nods, considering this information.

“You’re friends with Papa?” Ersa checks.

Imani grins, and it is a grin that is all clean, white teeth.

“I have a very good memory, Ersa,” Imani says. “I never forget a name, or a face. I met your father three years ago, when he was here on Mantooine for his work for Fest, and I heard his name, and I remembered it. Your father used to be a good friend of my niece, Taraja, when they were children, and I remembered Taraja telling me about her new Festian friend, Cassian Andor.”

Ersa looks at her father, frowning now. “Am I meeting your friend Taraja, too, Papa?”

Her father had been smiling during Imani and Ersa’s conversation, but that smile drops away at Ersa’s question, instantly transforming him into the melancholic father she’s much more used to seeing.

In an odd way, it is a relief.

“No, Ersa,” her father says. “My friend Taraja is dead. She’s been dead for… For over twenty-eight years.”

This is almost as shockingly huge a number to Ersa, who is six years old, as Imani’s age is.

“Has it really been that long?” Imani asks, looking just about as startled as Ersa. “Kriff. I’m getting old.”

“We all are,” Ersa’s father says.

“Are you really the Trade Commissioner for Mantooine?” Ersa asks, because she doesn’t like the sorrowful look on her father’s face, and she wants to pull him back from wherever it is his melancholy has taken him.

“I am,” Imani confirms. “It’s a position I’ve held for about eight years. Before that, I owned several stores in Mazl, selling headscarves.” She fingers the pale blue headscarf she’s wearing as she speaks.

“I like your scarf.”

Imani glances over at her scarf, smiling. “Thank you, Ersa. I like your scarf, too.”

Ersa’s scarf is also blue, but she thinks it is not as fine as Imani’s.

“Did you like owning your stores?”

“Very much,” Imani says.

“Why become the Trade Commissioner, then?”

Imani grins, and looks back at Ersa’s father, who is once again smiling softly. “She asks a lot of important questions.”

“She does,” Ersa’s father says.

Imani turns back to Ersa. “You are very like your father, Ersa.”

Ersa has heard this before.

She nods.

A man comes in, with three glasses of a bright orange drink, and Ersa takes her glass with enthusiasm, half-listening as Imani explains that it is cold Mantooian tea. She drinks it, and it’s sweet, and fruity, and  _light_ , and she grins.

Her father and Imani begin to talk about things Ersa has no interest in, like a recent trade deal with Ithor, and a new tariff, and so Ersa slides off her chair, and begins to look around Imani’s clean office.

There are books and books, like her father’s office on Fest, and she spies a handful of Festian dictionaries, and she picks one up, intrigued at her familial language translated into a language she doesn’t understand, but hears constantly, from her father during calls he takes at home, or here, on Mantooine. She flicks through the pages, and tries to memorize words she likes, important words, like  _Papa_ and  _Mama_ and  _brother_ , and then other extremely necessary words, like the swear words she plans to try out on Fima when she gets home.

She pictures Fima’s expression when she insults him in Mantooian, and she smiles.

“Ersa,” her father calls, and she looks up, instantly guilty, worried he’s somehow read her mind.

He’s suddenly crouched next to her. Imani is standing by the door, holding it open.

“I have to go look over some maps, in another room,” Ersa’s father says, expression somewhat stricken. “Will you be okay in Imani’s office, alone, for a little bit?”

“Yes, Papa,” Ersa says, and she will be, she has a lot of words to memorize.

Her father nods. “Okay. I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.”

Ersa nods, and her father leans forward, and presses a kiss to her forehead, before straightening. Ersa watches him follow Imani out of the room, the door left ajar, and then she returns to her book, running her finger under the printed words, muttering under her breath, trying to sound them out.

She can be at this for no more than a minute when a loud voice, speaking in Basic, interrupts her.

“You’re saying it wrong.”

Ersa looks up, dislodging the blue scarf wrapped loosely over her hair, and jerks around, to look at the doorway.

A young girl is standing there, and Ersa thinks she must be very close to her own age. The girl is dressed in a pale green sleeveless shirt, white pants splattered with a dark green pattern, and thin brown sandals. Unlike Ersa, and Imani, the girl does not have a scarf over her hair, which falls to her elbows, in waves of thin, intricately patterned braids.

The girl’s skin is black like Imani’s, and her eyes are that same electric blue.

_She’s bright_ , is Ersa’s first thought.

There is something about the girl that just screams  _light_.

(For Ersa, a six-year-old girl from frigid, gray, Fest; this is a lot.)

The girl is frowning at Ersa.

“What am I saying wrong?” Ersa asks, too intrigued to sound particularly rude.

“You were trying to say our word for  _yes_ , weren’t you?” The girl asks. She shuffles into the room, still frowning, but apparently similarly intrigued.

“Yes,” Ersa says, in Basic.

The girl nods. She speaks slowly, like how Ersa’s father spoke earlier, when he taught her how to say  _hello_.

Ersa repeats the girl now, as she did her father then.

And the girl smiles, like how Ersa’s father had, too.

“That’s better,” the girl says, nodding.

Ersa says  _hello_ , the only other word she feels comfortable saying in Mantooian.

“That’s pretty good,” the girl says, eyebrows rising. “Where does a Festian go about learning Mantooian?”

“My father,” Ersa explains. “He’s the Ambassador to Mantooine, for Fest.”

“Andor?” The girl checks, and Ersa nods a confirmation. The girl looks thoughtful. “My grandmother has told me about him. She likes him, says he’s good.”

“He is,” Ersa says, sounding more earnest and forceful than she has so far.

The girl only blinks at her, her opinion of Ersa’s father seemingly beginning and ending with her grandmother’s words.

“Is your grandmother Imani?” Ersa asks, making a guess, based on the girl’s appearance in Imani’s office.

“Yes,” the girl says. She deliberates for a moment, before adding, “I’m Nyota Baharia.”

“Ersa Andor,” Ersa says, and she holds her hand out, like her parents have told her to do when meeting someone new.

The girl grins at the gesture, and crosses the room, so she’s standing next to Ersa, who’s still sitting on the floor, and takes her hand.

“Hello, Ersa,” Nyota says, in Mantooian, and the words make Ersa smile.

“Hello, Nyota,” Ersa says, in Festian, and Nyota’s bright blue eyes widen.

“What did you say? Was that how you say  _hello?_ Say it again?”

Ersa laughs, and does just that.

 

* * *

 

When Ersa’s father and Imani return, it is to find two young girls sprawled on the floor, dictionaries opened around them, giggling and speaking in a language that is a unique mixture of Basic, Festian, and Mantooian.

“Ersa?” Ersa’s father asks, hesitantly, and Ersa looks up.

“Papa!” She calls, scrambling to her feet, and Nyota hurries to do the same. “Papa, this is my new friend, Nyota.”

Imani smiles at her granddaughter. “Did you come to visit me, Nyota?”

“Yes, grandma,” Nyota says, in Mantooian, and Ersa beams, because  _she understands_. Her father does too, and he listens as Nyota explains, in Basic, that she’d come to visit Imani, and had been very surprised to find a fellow six-year-old girl, from Fest, alone in Imani’s office instead.

“But I like Ersa,” Nyota finishes, and Ersa grins, because she likes Nyota, too.

Ersa’s father crouches down, so Nyota and Ersa’s faces are above his, and he holds his hand out to Nyota. “Hello, Nyota. My name is Cassian.”

“He’s my father,” Ersa says, somewhat unnecessarily, as Nyota takes Ersa’s father’s hand, smiling a little shyly.

“It is nice to meet you, Ambassador,” Nyota says, and Ersa’s father laughs.

“You can call me Cassian, please.”

Nyota nods, but she seems to be like Ersa, and unsure what to do with an authority figure who insists on easy familiarity. It is a little strange to Ersa, though, as she frequently forgets her father actually can be considered a figure of authority.

Ersa’s father looks away from Nyota, and back up to Imani.

“Blue eyes run in your family,” he comments.

Imani nods, somewhat solemn again. “Yes, very much. My daughter, Nyota’s mother, has the same eyes, as did my brother, and his daughter, Taraja, as you might recall.”

“I remember,” Ersa’s father says, quietly.

He looks down, then, and notices the dictionaries scattered over the floor. “Were you… Learning Mantooian, Ersa?”

“Yes, Papa,” Ersa says.

“Why?”

Ersa hesitates.

She’d originally picked up the dictionaries because she was bored, listening to her father and Imani discuss trade, and then she’d focused on the dictionaries in order to learn words that would irritate her brother.

But then Nyota had appeared, and given her a reason to learn  _all_ the words.

“Because I want to,” Ersa tells her father now.

He has a strange look on his face after she says this, one she’s never seen from him before.

He almost seems to be looking at her for the first time; like he’s never seen her before, until this moment.

Ersa doesn’t know what to make of it.

Of course her father has seen her before.

“That’s wonderful, Ersa,” Imani says, and Ersa looks away from her father’s face to gaze up at the old woman.

Imani is grinning, blue eyes soft, looking very touched.

“You are your father’s daughter, Ersa Andor,” Imani says.

“Yes,” Ersa’s father says, voice soft, and Ersa looks back at him.

She meets his eyes, the dark brown eyes that she inherited, the dark brown eyes that run in their family like the electric blue eyes apparently run in Nyota’s.

Her father’s eyes, the dark brown eyes she isn’t sure she likes too much.

“She is,” Ersa’s father says, and for a moment, Ersa thinks she understands him perfectly.

 

* * *

 

When Ersa was a baby, she couldn’t sleep.

She was up all hours of the night, and the day. But she wasn’t up screaming, or crying, or doing any of those things babies do when they’re awake when they shouldn’t be; rather, she was quiet, and still. She stared at everything around her, and blinked, and did not make a noise. It took months before her parents realized this was even happening.

Her mother thought it incredibly strange, especially because Ersa’s brother had been a deep and heavy sleeper as an infant. She worried that there was something wrong with Ersa, that maybe she was grievously sick, that maybe she was even dying.

But multiple doctors insisted there wasn’t anything actually wrong with her.

Ersa, it seemed, just didn’t like to sleep.

“Do you get enough sleep, Ersa?” Her mother asked, when Ersa was old enough to understand the question, and respond.

“Yes, Mama,” Ersa said, and continued to eat her breakfast.

“Why don’t you like to sleep?”

Ersa’s father was sitting at the table with them, frowning, eyes narrowed, and watching as Ersa considered her mother’s question.

“It’s boring,” Ersa said.

“Being awake in your room, at night, while everyone else sleeps, is better?” Ersa’s father asked.

Ersa didn’t like the dark. They all knew that.

She liked dreaming even less.

Her dreams were frequently terrifying, filled with red bolts of light that made people fall and not get up again, of the cracking and hissing noises of buildings forced to collapse, of dark gossamer blood in thick puddles on gray Fest snow.

The nightmares made her a light sleeper, prone to wakefulness.

More than once, Ersa overheard her parents talking about her various sleep issues, her frequent lack of sleep, her disinterest in the thing itself, her vivid nightmares.

Her mother wondered if it had to do with genetic, or adaptive, memory.

That Ersa might have inherited her parents’ traumas, in an unconscious, molecular way.

Ersa’s father was more skeptical, but couldn’t come up with a better explanation.

Ersa was a cheerful, thoughtful, and opinionated child. There was nothing apparently wrong with her, no devastatingly adverse effects of her sleep problems.

(Ersa’s habit of being woken easily, of sleeping very still, of insomnia; these were all things her father lived with, had developed in his youth, and it seemed that these, at least, could be explained by him. But he’d never  _disliked_ sleep like Ersa did.)

Her parents chose to put the issue aside, and see if it worsened, or if Ersa complained of being constantly tired.

What it really amounted to was Ersa being up, at all hours of the night, while her family slept.

She would wander through the house, peering into her brother’s room, spying him snoring, sprawled in all sorts of seemingly uncomfortable positions. She’d peek into her parents’ room, and see her father lying perfectly still, while her mother snored and twitched.

She would play with her toys, in the front room, furthest away from the bedrooms, and try to keep quiet.

She wasn’t always completely quiet; occasionally, she’d wake some member of her family, apologize, and try to go back to sleep.

But every now and then, Ersa is awoken first by her father.

She doesn’t know when it started happening; she imagines he’d accidentally wake her up as a baby, but she wouldn’t have been able to get up, to investigate the noise. Once she could walk, and escape her room, though, things changed.

She remembers being three years old, and shuffling out of her room, and finding her father sitting under the front window, knees tucked to his chest, tears sliding down his face.

He was crying, but silently, and Ersa couldn’t figure out what had woken her up.

Maybe just his stuttered breathing.

She walked to his side, using her memory of the room layout to guide her, because it was completely dark in the room, none of the lights turned on, and the only light was coming in from the lamp post outside the window, on the street, the gray snow falling softly around it.

She reached her father, and looked at him, waiting until he looked at her.

His eyes were watery, and even in the poor light she could see they were red-rimmed.

He’d been crying for a while.

“Papa,” Ersa said, and stopped, because she didn’t know what else to say.

She’d never seen her father cry before.

“Ersa,” her father said, and his voice was rough, and he hurriedly wiped his eyes and face, looking away from her. “Go back to bed. It’s late.”

“You’re crying,” Ersa said.

“Yeah,” her father said, nodding, and left it at that. “Go back to bed, Ersa.”

Ersa was three years old. She’d cried a lot, because of a wide range of things, trivial and consequential. She looked at her father, and wondered what had made him cry, if it was something like Fima stealing her favorite stuffed ewok, or a boy at the orphanage her mother worked at pulling Ersa’s hair.

“Why are you crying?” She asked, because if she was going to make him feel better, she needed to know what the problem was. This was logical, how her mother recommended she solve her problems.

Her father shrugged, still holding his knees tight to his chest. “Don’t worry about me, Ersa. I’m fine.”

Ersa wasn’t sure she believed him. She didn’t like feeling like she couldn’t believe him.

Instead of voicing this opinion, she sat down, pressing herself to his side, worming her way under his arm, forcing him to relinquish his tight grip on his knees. She felt him give in to the intrusion, pulling her into his lap, holding her tightly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and she was three years old, and had no idea what he could be apologizing for.

Maybe he had done something wrong. Maybe he’d mistranslated something at work, or eaten the leftover stew her mother had been saving.

She couldn’t imagine it being anything particularly consequential.

At three years old, there was no one Ersa thought better of than her father.

Still: maybe he had done  _something_ wrong. Best to be cautious.

“It’s okay, Papa,” she said. And then, to be clear, she added, “You can cry.”

But instead of continuing to cry, like she’d expected, he laughed.

“Ersa,” he murmured, shaking his head. “You’re so good.”

He pressed a kiss to her head.

“One day,” he added. “I’ll tell you what I’m sorry for. And you’ll understand.”

Ersa took his words in, but didn’t know what to do with them. She only kept still, in her father’s arms, and fell asleep, just like that.

She woke up, sometime later, at the sound of her mother’s voice.

“Get up, Cass,” her mother was whispering. “You’ll hurt your back if you sleep like that. How long have you been out here?”

“A while,” Ersa’s father replied, and the noise of his voice reverberated in his chest, which Ersa was sleeping against.

“Was she out here? Did she have a nightmare?”

“No,” Ersa’s father said. “I did. She found me, and she… She was so kind, Jyn.”

Ersa’s eyes were still closed, so she couldn’t see her mother’s expression, but a short silence followed these words of her father’s.

“Cass,” her mother said.

“She sat with me,” her father said. “And tried to make me feel better. She told me it was okay. And that I could cry.”

He gets to his feet as he speaks, still holding Ersa in his arms, and Ersa feels as they begin to walk down the hall to her bedroom, her mother following alongside.

“She’s just, uh…” Ersa’s father sighed. “Sympathetic, and patient, and thoughtful. It’s… She’s so familiar. I think we’re raising Nerezza.”

Ersa almost snapped her eyes open at that, to demand to know more, at the mention of the name of her father’s beloved older sister, who’d died long before Ersa had been born. Ersa had never known much about her aunt, save for the simple fact that she was one of her father’s favorite people.

Her father’s next words stopped her from moving.

“But quiet,” he added. “So… Maybe not exactly Nerezza.”

There was a short pause.

“Not Nerezza, Cassian,” her mother said. “But she is familiar. Because we’re raising  _you_.”

They’d reached Ersa’s room by then, and Ersa’s father carefully laid her down on her bed, and touched her hair, and said nothing more.

They left, closing the door behind them.

By then, Ersa had already known she looked like her father. She’d heard it before.

But it was the first time anyone had said she, herself, was like her father.

 

* * *

 

The inn in Mazl is nothing special. It’s small, and clean, and on the inside, it looks like it could be any other inn, in any part of the galaxy, including Fest.

But the view outside the window is nothing like Fest.

The sun never truly sets on Mantooine; it is far too massive, far too brilliant, to ever disappear from the sky entirely. There is always light on Mantooine, so  _nighttime_ is a relative thing, used to describe the time of day when the sun is at its lowest, when there are long shadows spiraling over the city, where it is possible to get a glimpse of black sky, and maybe, if it’s clear, a hint of stars.

Ersa, and her father, the insomniacs, sit on the small balcony outside their room at the inn, and look at the night sky of Mantooine.

The sky is blue, tinted with hints of black, and if Ersa squints, she thinks she can see pinpricks of starlight. The sun, setting past the city, out in the desert, is a mass of reds and oranges, staining the blue sky, turning it purple, turning it regal and remarkable.

There is so much color on Mantooine, and it is a far cry indeed from gray Fest.

“I’m glad you made a friend, Ersa,” Ersa’s father says, breaking the companionable silence.

“I like Nyota,” Ersa says, turning to look at him, grinning widely.

“What do you like about her?”

“She’s bright,” Ersa says. “Did you see, Papa? She’s  _bright_. Like Mantooine.”

She waves her arm at the scene outside their room, of Mazl, gleaming in the dying light, of the far yellow sand deserts, of the bleeding sun.

“Yeah,” her father says. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Ersa looks back at him, frowning, not expecting him to agree so quickly, not expecting him to understand. “You do?”

“Mm,” her father says. He finally turns away from the sun, and looks at Ersa, and smiles.

“My friend, Taraja,” he explains. “She was from Mantooine, too. I met her when I was your brother’s age. She was… She looked very much like Nyota, and Imani. Tall, and thin, with those same brilliant blue eyes. She was very… very bright. That was what I thought when I met her.”

Ersa nods, excitement filling her, because this is something she understands, something she can relate to her father on.

“She was a lot, to a twelve-year-old boy from Fest,” her father says.

“Did you get to see her often?”

Ersa wants to see Nyota often. She hopes she will.

“No,” Ersa’s father says, shaking his head as he speaks. “No, uh… She lived here, and I lived on Fest. I was only here for… For the war, and I only was with her for a few hours.”

Ersa has heard of the war. She knows both her parents fought in it, and that was how they met. She knows they helped dismantle the Empire, the governing body in the galaxy before the New Republic.

But she doesn’t know much about the war, or her parents’ roles in it, beyond that.

Whenever it comes up, her parents promise to tell her when she’s older.

“We communicated via hologram messaging,” her father continues. “For a few years. And then I moved away from Fest, to Coruscant. I think you knew that.”

She nods, because Fima has told her this, and her father has mentioned going to school on Coruscant before.

“And she turned up there, when I was seventeen,” her father says, and he smiles, but it’s a bittersweet smile, one Ersa recognizes. “And we were… We were very good friends.”

“I want to be very good friends with Nyota,” Ersa says.

Ersa’s father laughs. “Maybe you will be. But, um, with Taraja… I loved her more like how I love your mother, not like how I love you.”

“Oh,” Ersa says. “Were you married to her, like you are to Mama?”

“No, no,” her father says, quickly. “No. We, uh… We were too young. Fighting a war. But I… I did love her, very much.”

Ersa considers this.

“Taraja died?” She checks.

“Yes. A very long time ago.”

“Is that why you’re sad?”

Ersa’s father looks at her, and his mouth is twisted, halfway between frown and smile.

“Why do you think I’m sad, Ersa?”

“You’re quiet,” Ersa says. “And you frown a lot. Mama makes you laugh, and Fima does too, and you smile a lot around them. But you look sad when it’s just you and me, like now. And sometimes I wake up in the night, and I hear you walking around the house. I hear you cry.”

Her father listens intently as she speaks, and a silence falls when she finishes.

Ersa sits stiffly.

She’s never told her father her observations before, how she’s noticed he behaves differently around her than he does with her mother and Fima.

After a minute or so, her father smiles, leaning forward in his chair, looking at Ersa.

“I  _am_ sad,” he says. “But I’m not  _always_ sad. And not about Taraja, not always. I'm sad about the past, and the war, and what happened to my family, and everything I've done, the things I..." He sighs. "It’s just… I think I’ve been sad, in one way or another, my whole life. I think it’s just my personality. Can you understand that?”

“Like how Fima can get angry quickly, and Mama likes to take walks on her own sometimes?”

“Yes, like that. My being sad… It is  _never_ your fault, Ersa. Do you understand that?”

She shrugs. “But you’re always sad around me.”

“I’m not,” her father says. “I’m really not. You…” He sighs. “Ersa, have you noticed how people think you and I are a lot alike?”

“Travia Chan asked me if I was my father’s daughter,” Ersa says. “And Imani said the same thing, but it was not a question.”

“Yes,” her father says. “Well. I think they’re right.”

Ersa frowns.

“I think you’re like me, like Fima is like your mother,” Ersa’s father explains.

“Fima and Mama argue a lot,” Ersa says.

He laughs. “Yes. Because they’re very similar, and they’re both wired that way, to argue, to be passionate about everything. You, and me… We’re pensive. Quiet. You remind me a lot of myself, when I was your age. And that  _scares_ me.”

Ersa stares. “I scare you?”

“Not  _you_ , exactly. Not you. But all the terrible things that could happen to you, like the ones that happened to me, when I was a child; that’s what scares me. That’s why I’m… Why I’m somber around you. I love you very much, and I want… I want a better life for you.”

Ersa takes this in.

She’s six years old, and this is a lot.

“You…” She frowns. “You love me as much as you love Fima, and Mama.”

“ _Yes_ , Ersa, kriff--” Her father bites his lip, shaking his head, looking at the dark blue sky for a moment, seemingly gathering himself.

He turns back to her, and his eyes are wide, and fierce, and he looks like her.

“I love you just as much as I love your brother, and your mother,” he says, voice harsh. “Never doubt that. I would… I hate that you might not understand that.”

Ersa is smiling.

She hadn’t known, until this conversation, how very real her fear had been, that the reason her father was so melancholic around her was because he didn’t love her as much as he loved the rest of their family.

Now, she understands.

It’s because he worries Ersa is too much like him.

That her life will be like his, including her childhood.

She doesn’t know the details of his childhood, but she knows his father died when he was Ersa’s age, and she thinks that would be terrible enough.

She can’t imagine losing him.

“I love you, Papa,” she says, enthusiastically, because she does, she always has.

He grins, and it’s a grin she knows, because it’s hers, too.

“I know,” he says. “But I will never tire of hearing it. I love you too, Ersa.”

“I know,” Ersa says, because she really does now.

They look at the setting Mantooian sun.

“Papa,” Ersa says. “Will you teach me Mantooian?”

Her father looks back at her, and his eyes, her eyes, are soft, the light from Mantooine dancing off them, and she thinks she likes how the brown eyes they share look in this bright light.

She knows he’s delighted she’s asked this of him.

“Of course. We can start tomorrow.”

“Good,” Ersa says. “I wanna talk to Nyota in her language. And she wants to learn Festian, too.”

“My friend Taraja wanted to learn Festian,” her father comments. “I taught her as much as I could, and she taught me as much Mantooian as she could. Maybe it'll be a tradition.”

Ersa nods, sagely. “I know you didn’t marry your friend Taraja, but maybe I will marry my friend Nyota.”

Her father laughs, loudly.

“Maybe you will, Ersa,” he says, grinning. “Maybe you will. You can do whatever you want to do. Be whoever you want to be.”

And by that, he means,  _You're a lot like me, but you don't have to be me._

Ersa knows that.

Her father turns away, looking up at the sky, the blues, the dark.

“Look,” he says, softly. “Look at the stars, Ersa.”

She looks up. The stars are dim, difficult to see due to the encompassing light of Mantooine.

But they’re there. Present.

“They’re so bright,” Ersa’s father says, and he smiles.

 

* * *

 

Here is a list of things Ersa Andor knows to be bright:

-Nyota Baharia.

-Mantooine, and its ever-present, brilliant sun.

-Her brother’s fiery personality.

-Her mother’s green eyes.

-Her father’s smile.

 

* * *

 

“How was your trip to Mantooine?” Ersa’s mother asks, the next day, when Ersa and her father traipse into the house, shaking gray Fest snow off their coats and boots, the cold almost horrific next to the overwhelming, dry heat of Mantooine.

“I made a friend,” Ersa tells her mother. “Her name is Nyota. She’s Mantooian.”

“Oh?” Her mother says, glancing at Ersa’s father, who shrugs.

“Imani Ya’qul’s granddaughter,” he explains, and Ersa’s mother’s eyebrows rise.

“You’re joking.”

He laughs, moving to her side, and kissing her.

“Ersa also wants to learn Mantooian,” he adds.

“Yes,” Ersa confirms, tugging off her boots. “Papa’s going to teach me, and he’s going to try and get Nyota’s contact information from Imani, so we can hologram message.”

“You’re just like your father, Ersa,” Ersa’s mother comments, looking incredibly amused.

Ersa glances up, meeting her father’s eyes over her mother’s head.

He winks at her.

Ersa smiles.

There are worse things to be, she thinks.

 

**Author's Note:**

> STORY NOTES: the cafe in Mazl is the same cafe Cassian visited in GRAY AREAS. Nyota is a Swahili name meaning "star."
> 
> In Greek Mythology, Ersa is the daughter of Zeus and the Moon (Very Nonsense), and the goddess of dew. Dew also, sometimes, looks like starlight, if you ask me. (And, like Cassian was, Ersa is named after her mother.)
> 
> SERIES NOTES: Originally, I was going to write timestamps for the Nonsense. There was going to be the Battle of Hoth (I started it, it's like 4000 words, unfinished); a thing after the end of the war when Cassian saved Ethan Bain's life (also started, also unfinished, also about 4000 words); and Cassian meeting Imani Ya'qul and losing that unfinished feeling he carried about Taraja, as a kind of introspective piece about Jyn, too. (If you read this, and the Nonsense, and were like, "I do not remember Imani", you're right! she's new.) But these are all unfinished, so not sure about them.
> 
> What's definitely happening: a companion piece to this story, about Fima and Jyn. a couple of you did ask for that.  
>  
> 
> But about this unasked for story...
> 
> I spent my July considering grief, adaptive memory, trauma, and forgiveness, and the intersections of it all.
> 
> Long story short: this story is about loss, and the things it hands you. Your father's silence. Your grandmother's face. Maybe, on some genetic level, pieces of your own melancholy.
> 
> So that's the context of this story. This is where I put some of my grief, in this series I've spent so much time on this year. ROGUE ONE was a film about grief, and loss, and the hope found in that.
> 
> so was the Nonsense, which was so much about grief, memory, loss, and resilience in spite of it.
> 
> Cassian would be terrified his children would become the worst parts of him, terrified they'd end up like him. I also imagine Cassian's lifelong melancholia would continue long after the war, even when he was happy. It would surprise him, still.
> 
> And he'd be surprised that his children would help him carry it, the melancholia and the grief, without asking, or needing to know, why it was there.
> 
> Loss tends to circle back to kindness, and forgiveness.
> 
> I think that's all any of us can offer.  
>  
> 
> [as always, I delight in any comments/thoughts on this story and/or the rest of the Nonsense, and I'm theputterer at tumblr. I'm not definitively open for prompts, but if you have one, hit me up, so long as it conceivably fits somewhere in the Nonsense and doesn't require me having to rewrite any of the history I have going for Cassian. also, you've probably noticed I don't write smut. And no, I have no idea why any of this is still happening, but here we are.]


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